… in Business Organizations and Information Technologies

Learning only a single systems method is reductive. A course that exposes breadth in a variety of systems methods encourages students to reflect on their circumstances-at-hand, and their explicit and implicit influences on guiding others in projects espousing systems thinking. This was a premise behind the structuring of “Systems Thinking, Systems Design“, an Information Workshop (i.e. 6-week elective quarter course) offered to master’s students at the University of Toronto Faculty of Information (iSchool).

The first class day had a short course introduction focused on the history of the systems sciences, and a minimal orientation to the most basic concept in systems theory. Then, for the four class days that followed, student groups led 8 presentation-facilitations on a research reference cluster (with the instructor on standby as a subject matter expert on the content). The topics included:

After each of the four days, students wrote Personal Appreciation Diary Logs (blog posts), mostly on the open web. These provided feedback to the instructor for commentary (and some remediation) at the beginning of the subsequent class meeting. We could review common understandings, difficulties and misconceptions about systems methods.

For the last (sixth) class meeting, each student group was asked to “prepare and present an infographic poster on their impressions about the system approaches most relevant to their research”. The conclusions reflected different interests, experiences and orientations amongst the iSchool students.

Group 1 (Megan Ferguson and Anna Lutsky) focused on a question most relevant to their immediate career direction: “How can librarians use systems thinking and modeling to plan for the future, enhance library services and better assist patrons?” They emphasized Soft Systems Methodology, Service Systems, and Dialogue Mapping.

How using open data science has worked for the Ocean Health Index. It's impressive how big a difference their open processes have made on their progress. https://opensource.com/article/18/12/protecting-world-oceans #OpenScience #OpenData

@Matt_Noyes In the federated wiki community, experiments with Beaker Browser and Hashbase.io continue, http://forage.rodwell.me/view/federated-wiki-on-dat . In-progress work on DAT with Glitch https://wiki.dbbs.co/view/wiki-and-glitch . I tried DAT on laptop to friend&apos;s laptop without hashbase, non-technical users will hesitate to open up a port on a home router with news about hackers on IoT refrigerators.

Think that you’ll be working past age 65? #OntarioSecuritiesCommission 2018 survey says >25% were forced to retire, 59% retired voluntarily. > Just more than one-quarter of them were forced to retire, possibly for medical reasons, corporate restructuring or reaching a mandatory retirement age. Fifty-seven per cent said they retired voluntarily, while the rest said they […]

Chinese #dissidents ask #Twitter to consider dual key accounts, where deletion of a Twitter account requires two approvals.Chinese police have been forcing people to delete their Twitter accounts against their will. I wonder if these deleted accounts could be reinstated?It is an interesting idea, a unique use case specific to #China, but useful to them. […]

Think that you’ll be working past age 65? OSC @smarter_money 2018 survey says >25% were forced to retire, 59% retired voluntarily. … results of a new investor survey by the Ontario Securities Commission suggest that working longer isn’t viable for many people. > The survey of 2,000 people posed a series of questions to pre-retirees and people who […]

The traditional separation of mind and body is dissolved by @ISTDP, departing from traditional western medicine. Dr. Abbass, the head of Dalhousie University’s Centre for Emotions and Health, treats patients with these unexplained medical symptoms, a phenomenon also known as somatoform disorder, with an innovative form of talk therapy that’s producing impressive results. Called Intensive Short-Term […]

Women may more comfortable as anonymous on the World Wide Web, rather than contributing towards collaborative work such as Wikipedia. A comprehensive survey conducted in 2008 found that only 13 % of Wikipedia contributors are women. [….] Significant gender differences were found in confidence in expertise, discomfort with editing, and response to critical feedback. Women […]

Organizations need #communityship, as naturally-engaging #leadership in collective interests, says #HenryMintzberg @Mintzberg141. I’ll bet that beyond leadership is a profound sense of communityship. (Never heard that word? I made it up1, to put leadership in its place, namely to support communityship.) Effective organizations are communities of human beings, not collections of human resources. How can […]

As @relentlesseco writes that employees want meaningful work, perhaps the Quality of Working Life research back into the 1970s might be rediscovered. If you find “employee engagement” hard to take, “meaningful work” may also have your eyes glazing over, but that is another phrase worth noting. According to a survey of 2,000 U.S. workers by human-resources […]

Washington suffers from #Gerontocracy; Ottawa is 1-1/2 #Generations younger. To gauge the measure of the gerontocracy, Ottawa offers a remarkable comparison. The average age of Washington’s leaders – Mr. Trump, Ms. Pelosi, Mr. McConnell – is 75. In Canada, the three major party leaders – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and NDP […]

The WordPress O2 plugin with P2-Breathe theme results in a Facebook-like or Twitter-like streaming interface. The idea was first presented in 2013, evolving from the P2 theme in 2009 (originally launched as Prologue in 2008) when hosted on wordpress.com. “Beau…Read more ›

Talk at the Centre for Human Ecology, Glasgow, announced at http://www.che.ac.uk/tim-ingold-talks-about-the-sustainability-of-everything-10th-sept-2016/ Video posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncLv9Gk7XrI and https://vimeo.com/182572764 This digest was created by editing the text transcript generated by Youtube. View the video yourself for a more authentic reproduction. Lapses, grammatical…Read more ›

Plenary presentation by Tim Ingold, at the 2nd @AIBR_ International Conference of Anthropology. The 2nd AIBR International Conference of Anthropology brings together anthropologists from different parts of the world under the theme “Identity: Bridges, Thresholds, and Barriers.” [….] [6:58] So…Read more ›

Responses @HenryChesbrough on service platforms, living labs, and the future of open innovation. Since 2003, he has provided a precise definition, as the godfather of open innovation. InFocus Podcast with Dr. Henry Chesbrough. Dr. Chesbrough is the Program Director for…Read more ›

History of open source at IBM from 1998 @tmmoore_1 @ApacheCon NA 2016, and current IBM Open Cloud Architecture. Todd Moore, VP of Open Technology at IBM will share a retrospective of IBMs deep roots ASF and then follow with some…Read more ›